Donn Beach, the father of tiki culture, founder of the Donn the Beachcomber restaurant chain, and creator of the mai tai cocktail started out in California but after his service as a lieutenant colonel in WWII, he relocated to Hawaii.
In Hawaii, he established Waikiki's still popular (though very different than when it was founded) International Market Place and was part of a group of entrepreneurs who went out of their way to preserve historic sites across the islands.
Army Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel Donn Beach is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Section B, Grave 1-C.
1920's Notre Dame University football legend Jack Chevigny was not only part of the Fighting Irish's surprise upset over powerhouse Army in the now-classic 1928 Gipper Game, he was the one who yelled "That's one for the Gipper" as he crossed the goal line to tie the game up. He went on to coach football at first the NFL and then the collegiate levels after earing his law degree.
Chevigny joined the Marines and after multiple recruiting and physical training assignments, he requested a combat assignment. He ended up with the 27th Marines where he landed on Iwo Jima on D-Day where he was killed.
After initially being interred on Iwo Jima, Marine Corps First Lieutenant John "Jack" Chevigny's remains were moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific where he was buried in Section C, Grave 508.
Wah Kau Kong excelled in athletics and chemistry while attending the University of Hawaii. He was in the middle of a Master's Degree in chemistry when he decided to volunteer for the Army Air Corps in 1942.
He achieved the highest score on the air cadet entrance exam that had ever been seen at the time (he was already a licensed pilot) and when he graduated from Army flight school he was the first Chinese-American to become a fighter pilot. He was shot down over Germany protecting a crippled B-17.
Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant Wah Kau Kong was buried in Germany by the Germans who recovered his remains before being moved after the war to the American Cemetery in the Netherlands. He was eventually moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific where he rests in Section D Grave 453.
Family man Stanley Dunham served as an ordinance sergeant in World War II. After his daughter Ann graduated from high school in 1960, the family moved to Hawaii where he worked in the furniture industry, his wife Madelyn became the first senior executive at the Bank of Hawaii, and their daughter Ann studied Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. Ann married a fellow student from Kenya and together they had a son, future US president Barak Obama.
Ann divorced her first husband - it turns out that he forgot to mention that he was already married to a woman back in Kenya who he had two children with - and then married a surveyor from Indonesia. She and her son moved to Jakarta after Ann graduated but when Obama turned 10, he moved back to Hawaii to live with Dunham and Madelyn so he could attend school in the United States.
Army Sergeant Stanley Dunham was cremated and his ashes placed at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in columbarium CT1-B, row 400, niche 440.
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